Appendix

Lines and
sail-plan of the "Spray" --
Her pedigree so far as known --The lines of the
Spray --Her self-steering qualities
--Sail-plan and steering-gear --An unprecedented
feat --A final word of cheer to would-be
navigators

FROM
a feeling of diffidence toward sailors of
great experience, I refrained, in the preceding
chapters as prepared for serial publication in the
"Century Magazine," from entering fully
into the details of the Spray's
build, and of the primitive methods employed to
sail her. Having had no yachting experience at
all, I had no means of knowing that the trim
vessels seen in our harbors and near the land
could not all do as much, or even more, than the
Spray, sailing, for example, on a
course with the helm lashed.

I was aware that no other vessel had sailed in
this manner around the globe, but would have been
loath to say that another could not do it, or that
many men had not sailed vessels of a certain rig
in that manner as far as they wished to go. I was
greatly amused, therefore, by the flat assertions
of an expert that it could not be done.

The Spray, as I sailed her, was
entirely a new boat, built over from a sloop which
bore the same name, and which, tradition said, had
first served as an oysterman, about a hundred
years ago, on the coast of Delaware. There was no
record in the custom-house of where she was built.
She was once owned at Noank, Connecticut,
afterward in New Bedford and when Captain Eben
Pierce presented her to me, at the end of her
natural life, she stood, as I have already
described, propped up in a field at Fairhaven.
Her lines were supposed to be those of a North Sea
fisherman. In rebuilding timber by timber and
plank by plank, I added to her freeboard twelve
inches amidships, eighteen inches forward, and
fourteen inches aft, thereby increasing her sheer,
and making her, as I thought, a better deep-water
ship. I will not repeat the history of the
rebuilding of the Spray, which I have
detailed in my first chapter, except to say that,
when finished, her dimensions were thirty-six feet
nine inches over all, fourteen feet two inches
wide, and four feet two inches deep in the hold,
her tonnage being nine tons net, and twelve and
seventy one-hundredths tons gross.

I gladly produce the lines of the
Spray, with such hints as my really
limited fore-and-aft sailing will allow, my
seafaring life having been spent mostly in barks
and ships. No pains have been spared to give them
accurately. The Spray was taken from
New York to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and, under
the supervision of the Park City Yacht Club, was
hauled out of water and very carefully measured in
every way to secure a satisfactory result.
Captain Robins produced the model. Our young
yachtsmen, pleasuring in the "lilies of the
sea," very naturally will not think favorably
of my craft. They have a right to their opinion,
while I stick to mine. They will take exceptions
to her short ends, the advantage of these being
most apparent in a heavy sea.

Some things about the Spray's deck
might be fashioned differently without materially
affecting the vessel. I know of no good reason
why for a party-boat a cabin trunk might not be
built amidships instead of far aft, like the one
on her, which leaves a very narrow space between
the wheel and the line of the companionway. Some
even say that I might have improved the shape of
her stern. I do not know about that. The water
leaves her run sharp after bearing her to the last
inch, and no suction is formed by undue cutaway.

Smooth-water sailors say, "Where is her
overhang?" They never crossed the Gulf Stream
in a nor'easter, and they do not know what is best
in all weathers. For your life, build no fantail
overhang on a craft going offshore. As a sailor
judges his prospective ship by a "blow of the
eye" when he takes interest enough to look
her over at all, so I judged the
Spray, and I was not deceived.

In a sloop-rig the Spray made that
part of her voyage reaching from Boston through
the Strait of Magellan, during which she
experienced the greatest variety of weather
conditions. The yawl-rig then adopted was an
improvement only in that it reduced the size of a
rather heavy mainsail and slightly improved her
steering qualities on the wind. When the wind was
aft the jigger was not in use; invariably it was
then furled. With her boom broad off and with the
wind two points on the quarter the
Spray sailed her truest course. It
never took long to find the amount of helm, or
angle of rudder, required to hold her on her
course, and when that was found I lashed the wheel
with it at that angle. The mainsail then drove
her, and the main-jib, with its sheet boused fiat
amidships or a little to one side or the other,
added greatly to the steadying power. Then if the
wind was even strong or squally I would sometimes
set a flying-jib also, on a pole rigged out on the
bowsprit, with the sheets hauled flat amidships,
which was a safe thing to do, even in a gale of
wind. A stout downhaul on the gaff was a
necessity, because without it the mainsail might
not have come down when I wished to lower it in a
breeze. The amount of helm required varied
according to the amount of wind and its direction.
These points are quickly gathered from practice.

Briefly I have to say that when close-hauled in
a light wind under all sail she required little or
no weather helm. As the wind increased I would go
on deck, if below, and turn the wheel up a spoke
more or less, relash it, or, as sailors say, put
it in a becket, and then leave it as before.

To answer the questions that might be asked to
meet every contingency would be a pleasure, but it
would overburden my book. I can only say here
that much comes to one in practice, and that, with
such as love sailing, mother-wit is the best
teacher, after experience. Labor-saving
appliances? There were none. The sails were
hoisted by hand; the halyards were rove through
ordinary ships' blocks with common patent rollers.
Of course the sheets were all belayed aft.

The windlass used was in the shape of a winch,
or crab, I think it is called. I had three
anchors, weighing forty pounds, one hundred
pounds, and one hundred and eighty pounds
respectively. The windlass and the forty-pound
anchor, and the "fiddle-head," or
carving, on the end of the cutwater, belonged to
the original Spray. The ballast,
concrete cement, was stanchioned down securely.
There was no iron or lead or other weight on the
keel.

If I took measurements by rule I did not set
them down, and after sailing even the longest
voyage in her I could not tell offhand the length
of her mast, boom, or gaff. I did not know the
center of effort in her sails, except as it hit me
in practice at sea, nor did I care a rope yarn
about it. Mathematical calculations, however, are
all right in a good boat, and the
Spray could have stood them. She was
easily balanced and easily kept in trim.

Some of the oldest and ablest shipmasters have
asked how it was possible for her to hold a true
course before the wind, which was just what the
Spray did for weeks together. One of
these gentlemen, a highly esteemed shipmaster and
friend, testified as government expert in a famous
murder trial in Boston, not long since, that a
ship would not hold her course long enough for the
steersman to leave the helm to cut the captain's
throat. Ordinarily it would be so. One might say
that with a square-rigged ship it would always be
so. But the Spray, at the moment of
the tragedy in question, was sailing around the
globe with no one at the helm, except at intervals
more or less rare. However, I may say here that
this would have had no bearing on the murder case
in Boston. In all probability Justice laid her
hand on the true rogue. In other words, in the
case of a model and rig similar to that of the
tragedy ship, I should myself testify as did the
nautical experts at the trial.

But see the run the Spray made
from Thursday Island to the Keeling Cocos Islands,
twenty-seven hundred miles distant, in
twenty-three days, with no one at the helm in that
time, save for about one hour, from land to land.
No other ship in the history of the world ever
performed, under similar circumstances, the feat
on so long and continuous a voyage. It was,
however, a delightful midsummer sail. No one can
know the pleasure of sailing free over the great
oceans save those who have had the experience. It
is not necessary, in order to realize the utmost
enjoyment of going around the globe, to sail
alone, yet for once and the first time there was a
great deal of fun in it. My friend the government
expert, and saltest of salt sea-captains, standing
only yesterday on the deck of the
Spray, was convinced of her famous
qualities, and he spoke enthusiastically of
selling his farm on Cape Cod and putting to sea
again.

To young men contemplating a voyage I would say
go. The tales of rough usage are for the most
part exaggerations, as also are the stories of sea
danger. I had a fair schooling in the so-called
"hard ships" on the hard Western Ocean,
and in the years there I do not remember having
once been "called out of my name." Such
recollections have endeared the sea to me. I owe
it further to the officers of all the ships I ever
sailed in as boy and man to say that not one ever
lifted so much as a finger to me. I did not live
among angels, but among men who could be roused.
My wish was, though, to please the officers of my
ship wherever I was, and so I got on. Dangers
there are, to be sure, on the sea as well as on
the land, but the intelligence and skill God gives
to man reduce these to a minimum. And here comes
in again the skilfully modeled ship worthy to sail
the seas.

To face the elements is, to be sure, no light
matter when the sea is in its grandest mood. You
must then know the sea, and know that you know it,
and not forget that it was made to be sailed over.

I have given in the plans of the
Spray the dimensions of such a ship
as I should call seaworthy in all conditions of
weather and on all seas. It is only right to say,
though, that to insure a reasonable measure of
success, experience should sail with the ship.
But in order to be a successful navigator or
sailor it is not necessary to hang a tar-bucket
about one's neck. On the other hand, much thought
concerning the brass buttons one should wear adds
nothing to the safety of the ship.

I may some day see reason to modify the model
of the dear old Spray, but out of my
limited experience I strongly recommend her
wholesome lines over those of pleasure-fliers for
safety. Practice in a craft such as the
Spray will teach young sailors and
fit them for the more important vessels. I myself
learned more seamanship, I think, on the
Spray than on any other ship I ever
sailed, and as for patience, the greatest of all
the virtues, even while sailing through the
reaches of the Strait of Magellan, between the
bluff mainland and dismal Fuego, where through
intricate sailing I was obliged to steer, I
learned to sit by the wheel, content to make ten
miles a day beating against the tide, and when a
month at that was all lost, I could find some old
tune to hum while I worked the route all over
again, beating as before. Nor did thirty hours at
the wheel, in storm, overtax my human endurance,
and to clap a hand to an oar and pull into or out
of port in a calm was no strange experience for
the crew of the Spray. The days
passed happily with me wherever my ship
sailed.